


maybe i should have waited for last year

by phosphenical



Category: Messiah Project - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hagane no Shou, Mourning, good lord the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 12:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8143061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phosphenical/pseuds/phosphenical
Summary: We carry our dead with us.
(in which a body says a lot more than words could)





	

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this exactly a year ago! sept. 26, 2015. isn't that cool
> 
> kinda proud of this, decided to finally post it
> 
> i love death fics. there's some...non-graphic violence? canon-typical. yeah. mentions of dead bodies and blood.

It was kind of funny. Not in the laugh-out-loud sort of way but more of the kind where the irony might have only elicited a sneer or a sharp clicking of the tongue, prompting further thought until you lied awake at night with bitterness on the same tongue you scorned with.

It was kind of funny how the same country he denounced - the same one he blamed for his mother’s suffering, the same one that seemed to fail everyone he knew was the same one he ended up working under. Only for convenience, he kept repeating to himself, and yet it was more trouble than it was worth, so he wasn't quite sure why he stayed.

He was never one to appreciate being treated like a dog, but he knew his place. The more he continued the more he realized that he was the world's finest hypocrite - he claimed to do everything for himself, yet the collar around his neck was tightening with every tug of the leash. If he was a dog then he supposed the situation ended up garnering more points in the whole humor category. Sometimes he couldn’t help but wonder which god of fate he must have pissed off because _someone_ had to be enjoying this set up.

Misu nudged at one of the bodies with his foot before crouching down, fingers wrapping around a mask. It felt fragile in his hand, ready to crumble under the smallest amount of pressure, so much different than the cat it resembled. Cats were stubborn, he knew. He tossed it on the ground away from him, no longer wanting to look at it.

Dogs versus cats, it was almost fitting, was it not? Two groups clashing - this time, he was on the side that thought they were doing right. These terrorists, no matter how driven, knew of the own destruction they caused firsthand.

The face underneath was screwed up in an expression of pain, and he found himself snorting at it, not out of malice but rather understanding.. Of course it was what happened when you picked a battle you couldn’t win and had run out of luck. As long as it was no one he knew, it didn’t matter.

An icy feeling settled into his stomach. One that frozen his lungs in place and left him desperately grappling for air.

_No._ Now that the idea was in his head he couldn’t help but scan the bodies all around him desperately before his feet carried him further and further. In some sort of a trance he moved from one to another, methodically pulling off the masks and crushing them.

He tugged, and snapped.

He tugged, and _snapped._

Obsessively performing the ritual, moving from room to room without pause. They couldn’t even find peace in death, that much was certain. There was something rather pathetic about depending on darkness as some sort of release. Misu found it unforgivable, and by the time he had finished going through the corpses the sun had begun to set.

With a frown, he vowed to finish up quickly. Away from the others there was a lithe body, injuries that didn’t seem to match up with the others’. Almost as though this one had suffered a fate that didn’t come from their hands.

When he took the mask off his heart stopped.

 

* * *

 

Amane was beautiful in death, eyes closed and skin pale. He outshone his dark red garments.

 

* * *

 

Misu stared. He wasn’t sure how long he stared but he did. He stared and stared. The sun dipped below the horizon and finally, _finally_ he gathered the body up in his arms, holding the other close to his chest. He did not stumble. He did not cry. He just held onto the cold body and got to his feet.

He walked. Amane was still, very still. There was no where to take him, no home or place of peace that would be Misu’s final offering to him. His phone was in his hand before he was able to _stop_ and _think,_ but Takano was nothing if loyal, his gaze interrogating but softening as he looked down at the body. "Is that..." For some unfathomable reason, he sounded worried. Misu hadn't told him anything over the phone, so he hadn't known what to expect.

Misu did not look down at Amane. He just searched Takano’s eyes, wondering why he saw something that looked akin to pity. A jaw clenched, and he couldn’t be certain if it was his teeth clicking together or the other’s. “It is.” His voice was hoarse, yet he had no tears in his eyes. “Will you do one last thing for him?”

That night they took a shovel and corpse to an abandoned field. Even in the car Misu had not let go, running his fingers through dark hair as Amane rested against his lap. If he had been breathing, he certainly would have been shivering. But he was not so he did not.

He was not sure how to let go. He was not sure if he even wanted to look at Amane’s face any longer, as it would have been the last time he saw the other. Is that how he wanted to remember him? Lips that were too pale and cheeks that were too sharp?

Misu carried him out. Takano followed behind, not daring to say a single word for fear of invoking his wrath. That was his mistake, clearly, for even as the shovel broke the dirt Misu could not understand why the other would think such a thing. He was not angry. He was not even sad.

He just sat and watched as Takano switched out with him and continued to dig the hole. Deeper and deeper, taking off his jacket when the sweat made his shirt stick to his back. Further and further while Misu’s eyes continued to take in the sight of Amane in death.

“I'm done.” The first words to break the silence in well over a few hours. Takano was so slow, sometimes. “Are you...ready?” Hesitant, treating him like a bomb about to explode. Misu only shook his head.

“Do you have a blanket or a sheet to put around him?” The thought of dirt covering his skin, smearing black against red...Amane deserved better. Finally he tore his gaze away, staring up at Takano.

“In the car. I think.” The words were uncertain, halting. “I’ll check.” He seemed eager to leave, to run. Misu didn’t bother to respond as his technical-superior began to walk back across the field of the lot and towards the car. Perhaps Takano didn’t like the sight of Amane being without his smirk, without an animated expression on his face.

Misu wasn’t sure he liked it either.

He returned entirely too soon, and Misu took the blankets from his grasp. “Don’t touch him.” There was nothing coloring his voice, just a calm order. He wrapped Amane up as though there was nothing to worry about except a cold night. There was no goodbye. He just lowered him into the hole and picked the shovel up, dumping scoop of dirt after scoop of dirt atop the lifeless body.

There was enough dirt to fill the grave up again. Misu didn’t know if he could do the same thing to the feeling in his chest.

 

* * *

 

He stayed until morning. Takano stayed with him, turning away often before facing front with eyes that were more red and a nose that was running. Misu, for the life of him, could not guess why he had been crying. Why did he feel sad? He had no reason to.

(Misu couldn't remember the last time he slept)

Amane had certainly never treated him with kindness. Both himself and Amane could be rather cruel to Takano, even, taking too much enjoyment from his frustration and pain.

Eventually, after standing still for what felt like an eternity, he turned on his heel. “Let’s go.” Hands in his pocket, he made his way towards the car.

Takano was not subtle with his concern. It burned a hole into Misu, and he found himself unable to breathe even as he waited for the other to catch up. For some ungodly purpose Takano had stayed at the grave just a little longer than Misu, as though expecting Amane would rise up and proclaim that this was all an elaborate hoax and that they should have seen the looks on their faces.

He did not.

On the car ride back, Takano asked him in a quiet voice that wouldn’t he have liked to get an autopsy done? Or at least given him a proper burial? Wouldn’t he have liked to know exactly when and how he died and what killed him?

Misu blinked slowly, staring at the window, and answered, “I already know.”

 

* * *

 

Amane haunted him everywhere he went. He lingered like a thick fog choking him.

 

* * *

 

_If you had a choice, Misu-san,_ Amane moved against his chest, blinking up at him through thin lashes and impossibly tired eyes. _Would you keep a ghost with you? Of your mom?_

At that time Misu didn’t have any words for such a stupid question. He merely told him to shut up and go to sleep, that he was still sick and saying things that didn’t make any sense. The question kept him up for the rest of the night as he tried to pick apart every nuance of the sentence.

At the time, he hadn’t understood the meaning. Now he did, and now he knew what he should have said.

_No_ , and _that was not where ghosts belonged_. Misu was carrying the weight of Amane’s ghost in his heart and it was slowly tearing him up bit by bit, chipping off pieces of himself for Amane’s lifeless fingers to cling to in his grave.

More than anything he wished that he had answered. Maybe that way Amane would have learned to leave him alone.

 

* * *

 

“Where’s your partner?” Haku had a different kind of look in his eyes - something that was hard and sharp, surely something that had been crafted when he graduated the Church and began to work on his own. No one to watch his back.

“Where’s yours?” Misu grunted, swinging his arm at the other once more, too close to properly use his gun and fire off a few shots.

“Not here.” The taller one huffed, doing everything he could to just avoid the hits and remain on his feet. Misu was relentless, he didn’t grow tired, he didn’t grow slow -

“Mine’s dead.”

 

* * *

 

He never revisited the grave. There was no purpose when he felt that he had never let go of Amane’s corpse. The weight of him in his arms was always pressing down, trying to drag him further and further into the dirt. Amane’s true grave was Misu, some sort of living memorial.

Who left flowers for those that were still alive?

No one. Misu crushed a petal underneath his foot.

 

* * *

 

Amane was the only thing holding the threads together. Even in death he was the most annoying person Misu had ever known.

 

* * *

 

In the end, Misu had always imagined two possibilities. Either they would both die in some grand stunt that would change the country forever, or he would fall by Amane’s hand. He had never considered the third option.

 

When Takano had asked him if he wanted to know who killed him, all those years in that car ride, Misu had said no. That was because he already knew how and what and why and when.

 

The only one capable of killing Amane was himself.

 

Misu saw no reason why he should have to carry that with him too.


End file.
